Greetings from the trampoline palace that is Bounce.
I am not in some exotic destination, experiencing a European summer, a tropical getaway or an adventure-filled holiday (although navigating the car park at Bounce could qualify as quite the adventure)!
Instead, I’m braving yet another set of school holidays while still trying to maintain some semblance of structure and routine.
I currently find myself, for the next 48 minutes, waiting for a coffee,with literally hundreds of school-aged kids packed into a warehouse with dozens of trampolines. I am one of those parents and carers working and waiting. Waiting for the next activity to finish, waiting to collect kids, waiting for the washing to be done, waiting for others to finish their part of the work, waiting for a client to call. Working and waiting.
I have other kids that I no longer need to wait for. They are largely independent, living their post-school young adult lives. Work and university, friendship and adventure. I was once like them. Fun (kind of), free, and so incredibly optimistic.
I was sold the dream. Work hard, develop the career, have a great relationship, start a family, continue the career.
Hang on, what?
Why did they leave out the bit that covers anxiety-fuelled guilt that comes from “living the dream”? It’s bullshit. It always has been. This “dream” often feels more like recurring déjà vu, except we continue to hack our way to it more and more so we can have “more” of this dream.
Now, before you reach for your keyboard to tell me how privileged this all is, I am well aware of how it sounds. I know that for many this is all unobtainable. Limited access to good education, jobs and support looks like a different life: the one my parents, their siblings and many of their friends had, and still have. This life, with not so many shiny things, can also be a happy life, maybe even happier.
The older I get, the more I realise how ridiculously idiotic it is to keep pursuing the bullshit.
We get the qualifications and promotions so we can fund the life. The life consists of debt, and lots of shiny things: the bigger and better car, the renovations, the holidays, the gadgets, the activities, the active social life (and sex life) which we are meant to have despite increasing exhaustion, the health, the energy, the supplements, the help, the… and on it goes.
So, with the wisdom that comes from sitting in a Bounce waiting area, I can’t help but consider if I would do it differently.
Would I be less ambitious, less interested in shiny things, in exchange for a simpler life? I think about my parents a lot. Dad worked three jobs when we were young; Mum was home with my brother and me until we were school age, then Mum and Dad both worked to achieve. They built their home, ran their business, enjoyed their family and friends, went on holidays, and lived a good life. My parents were working class, but just as ambitious. They may not have had what I have, but relative to the time, they still set about achieving, working for something.
My Dad died four years ago at the age of seventy. Young. Life can be cruel and unfair. Before he died, I asked him if he would have done anything differently. He looked at me, almost with pity in his eyes. I think the thought he didn’t share was how entitled I was to think it could be done differently. Almost an affront to the sacrifice he made as a young adult, moving to the other side of the world to a foreign place with a suitcase, no qualifications, money or English fluency. When I followed up with a question about whether he would have worked less or differently, he replied with a simple but powerful, “no”. He did not regret how hard he worked, what he had achieved, and his chance at living the dream: the migrant dream.
It’s an embarrassing thing for tears to well up in your eyes at Bounce. But mine have. This dream I am living, with all the things, is one I am living without apology or regret.
I may have been sold a bullshit dream that has cost relationships, health, sleep and sometimes joy, but it has also given me so much.
To now ponder this with disappointment is futile. I have been present, engaged and able to choose differently if I wanted to. And I don’t. I tinker from time to time with work volumes, greater focus on rest, reduced stress, and more time for connecting with people and simple activities, but I have no regrets. I live a big life. I work hard for a big life. I love a big life.
My brother regularly says, “go hard or go home.” And when I am hopefully a lot older than seventy, I hope to share the same reflection if asked whether I would have lived differently. I will not squander this opportunity to live my dream, my life. Awake, conscious, alive. Not because others suggest what I need to do, and how I should do it, but because I choose my dream, and how I want to live it.